Quotes from Laura Hillenbrand

Pillsbury shouted the only word that came to mind. "Ow!

He found several thick chocolate bars—probably Hershey's military-issue Ration D bars—divided into segments and packaged in wax-dipped containers to resist gas attack. Designed to be unpalatably bitter so soldiers would eat them only in dire circumstances, they were formulated to be highly caloric and melt-resistant.

The turret was shot with holes, and the floor was jingling with flakes of metal and turret motor.

Charlie Tilghman, who flies a restored B-24 for the Commemorative Air Force, taught me about flying the Liberator.

His books were the closest thing he had to furniture and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.

Without dignity, identity is erased.

A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.

What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.

When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him.

A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain.

At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.

maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.

Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil. Joyful and grateful in the midst of slow dying, the two men bathed in that day until sunset brought is, and their time in the doldrums, to an end.

Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they scarified, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book {Unbroken} is dedicated

It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.

People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn't spoken.

Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books....The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.

His conviction that everything happened for a reason, and would come to good, gave him laughing equanimity even in hard times.

In a single, silent moment, his rage, his fear, his humiliation and helplessness, had fallen away. That morning, he believed, he was a new creation. Softly, he wept.

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.

character reigns preeminent in determining potential.